Not Yet Yours

Chapter 29

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Liam

M y eyes instantly go to Harriet sitting on the couch beside Max. Her face is blotchy from crying, and I hate myself for being the one to make her cry. I want to go to her and wrap her up in my arms and never let her go, but something tells me that if I go to her and try to embrace her now, she will push me away. I force myself to look away from Harriet for a second and I glance at Max and then Cullen, both of whom are watching me. It seems that only Harriet is looking anywhere but at me.

I take a seat in the empty armchair. I’m on Max’s end of the couch and then there’s Harriet beside her and then Cullen in the other armchair. I want to be closer to Harriet, but I’m not about to start this conversation by insisting we all play musical chairs.

“Ok,” Cullen says, looking at me. “Let’s start by you telling Harriet that you’re not married to someone else.”

“I… I can’t do that,” I say. “Because I am married to someone else, and I don’t want to lie to her.”

I look at her as I say this last part, but she’s still refusing to look at me. Max and Cullen are both still staring at me and both of them have their mouths hanging open by the time I finish dropping that little bombshell.

“But I… I don’t understand,” Cullen says. “How? When? Who?”

“I told you, didn’t I?” Harriet says. She sniffs loudly and stands up, still only looking between Max and Cullen and avoiding looking at me at all. “I don’t need to hear anymore. Max, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She starts for the door, and I jump to my feet.

“Harriet no, please don’t go,” I say. I grab her wrist and she tries to pull it away from me but I keep my grip on her. Normally I would let her go. I don’t like holding her against her will like this, but I need her to stay and listen and if I have to hold her for a second to make that happen then I will do what I need to do. “Please. Just hear me out and if you still want to leave when I’m done then… well I was going to say I won’t try to stop you, but I will always try to stop you from leaving me. But please just hear me out.”

She sighs and she looks at me for the first time since I got here. Her eyes are red rimmed and sore looking, and I hate myself all over again.

“Fine,” she says. “But I can’t think of anything that you can say that will make this ok.”

For the moment I’m just glad she has agreed to stay and hear me out. She goes back to her seat on the couch, and I go back to mine in the armchair. I don’t really know where to start to explain this, but I know that if I don’t start talking soon, Harriet isn’t going to hang around for much longer.

“It was fifteen years ago,” I start, figuring a good start might be to let Harriet know that this isn’t new or fresh, but judging by the way her face falls, I think that might have been the wrong opening line. It hits me then. It’s not just because I haven’t told her I am already married that has Harriet freaked out, although that’s enough to piss her off, I’m sure. She thinks I’m married as in living with my wife and cheating with her. I hurry on so that she can get that idea out of her head right away. “We were both nineteen. I was in Las Vegas at a bachelor party, and she was there at a bachelorette party. We were both horribly drunk and we started chatting in a bar somewhere. We kissed and then somehow, we decided it would be a laugh to get married. We did no more than kiss, even after the so-called wedding, and that night, we both went back to our respective hotels alone, and I haven’t seen nor heard from her since.”

“So, you’re saying you’re not with her now?” Harriet says.

“I’m saying I was never with her,” I clarify. “Honestly, I don’t even know the girl’s last name. Her first name was Becky. That’s about as much as I know about her.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Cullen asks. “I mean I get why you didn’t tell Mom or whatever, but why not me?”

“And why the hell didn’t you get the marriage annulled?” Max adds.

I look at Cullen first.

“I didn’t tell anyone, including you, because I was embarrassed at doing such a stupid, cliché thing,” I say. “You see it all the time in these lame movies that people go off to Vegas and marry a stranger and I didn’t want to be that guy.”

I then look at Max.

“I was nineteen. I didn’t even know an annulment was a thing then. Obviously once I got home, I started to think about a divorce, but like I said, all I knew about the girl was her first name and I didn’t know where to start to try and find her. I gave up and I told myself I would circle back to it later. The years passed and I kind of never did,” I say. “I figured it didn’t matter really because it wasn’t like I ever really wanted to get married back then anyway and then as crazy as it sounds, I kind of… I don’t know how to word this. I want to say I forgot about it, but that’s a stretch. I don’t think you can forget you’re married. It just was a thing that happened a long time ago that I never thought about anymore I suppose you could say.”

Max and Cullen are looking at each other and I can clearly read the look. They are basically saying they believe me, which is good, if Max believes me, that gives me hope that she can help Harriet to see the truth, but the look also says that they are wondering how the hell I could be this stupid. I can’t be offended by that because I’m wondering the same thing myself. Just like I did fifteen years ago after coming back from that trip, but now even more so. Because back then all it meant is if it came out, I would get teased. Now it means I could lose everything that matters to me.

I get up and step past Max and I sit down on the edge of the coffee table in front of Harriet. I reach out and take both of her hands in both of mine, one in each. The fact she lets me and doesn’t try to pull her hands away from me gives me hope that she might be coming around to forgiving me.

“Harriet I am so, so sorry that I didn’t tell you about this. But please believe me when I say that I wasn’t consciously keeping it from you. It’s honestly something that I haven’t thought about in years,” I say. “I am guilty of being stupid. So fucking stupid. But I haven’t cheated on you or hidden a wife from you. I would never do that to you. I love you far too much to risk losing you like that.”

Harriet doesn’t say anything, but she does look me in the eye for the first time since I got here and again, I take that as a good sign.

“Please say you’ll forgive me,” I say.

She looks deep into my eyes for a moment like she’s searching my soul. I hope she is, because if she can do that, all she will find there is herself.

“I do,” Harriet says. “I forgive you. Of course, I do.”

She has tears in her eyes again but she’s smiling, and I’m confident they are happy tears because she’s realized that I am hers and only hers. I cup her face in my hands, lean forward, and kiss her. She kisses me back and wraps her arms around me.

“Ok you two, get a room,” Cullen says after a few moments of Harriet and me kissing.

We pull apart and Harriet smiles at me, her cheeks pink, and then she looks down into her lap, embarrassed that she forgot we had an audience. I’m not embarrassed. I don’t care if Cullen and Max saw us kiss. I don’t care if the whole world sees us kiss. As long as Harriet wants to keep kissing me, I will be there to kiss her, no matter where we are and no matter who is there to be made uncomfortable by it.

I turn to Cullen and smile.

“We have a room, just you and Max are in it,” I say.

Max hits me in the arm with a cushion off the couch.

“Don’t even go there,” she says with a laugh and after a second, we’re all laughing.

Max gets up and moves to the armchair I’ve just vacated, and I get off the coffee table and take the seat on the couch beside Harriet. I take her hand in mine, and she squeezes my hand, looks at me, and smiles again.

“Do any of you have any more questions about this before we bury it and vow never to speak of it again?” I say once the laughter has died down.

Max and Cullen both shake their heads and I look at Harriet.

“Actually, I do have a question,” she says.

She’s looking me dead in the eye and she’s still holding my hand, so I don’t think the question is going to be anything too damning.

“What is it?” I ask her.

“You said you never really bothered looking into how to get a divorce because you never saw yourself wanting to get married in the future anyway,” she says. She pauses and then she blurts her question out in a rush. “Is that still how you feel about the idea of marriage?”

I shake my head.

“No,” I say. “When I felt that way, I didn’t imagine I would ever meet someone I would fall deeply in love with as I have with you. If I could find a way out of the original marriage, I absolutely would marry you in a heartbeat.”

This seems to appease Harriet and she smiles at me.

“Wait,” Cullen says. “Is that a proposal?”

All eyes are on me, but I only have eyes for Harriet. I try to read her face and I see she isn’t angry at the crappy way this has gone, and I think she will be more happy with what I’m considering to be the worst proposal ever than she will be if I say no, even if it means only waiting for a day or two while I get things put in place to do this right.

“Yes,” I say. “I guess it is.”

Harriet’s smile widens and then I release her hand and get back off the couch and this time, I get down on one knee in front of Harriet. She presses her hand over her mouth trying to hide her shocked delight, but it’s written all over her face despite her hand.

“I don’t have a ring right now,” I say. “And this…” I gesture around me to Cullen’s living room, “this isn’t where I would have chosen to have done this. But here we are. I guess the only thing that matters is that I love you and I want to spend forever with you. Harriet, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” Harriet says in an excited squeal.

She reaches down for me, and I come up to meet her. Our lips find each other as I pull her to her feet and we wrap our arms around each other as we kiss, and this time, Cullen doesn’t tell us to get a room, although I’m sure he is dying to. He knows Max will kill him if he ruins this moment for Harriet.

When we finally do pull our mouths away from each other, I don’t have eyes for anyone or anything other than Harriet. I look into her eyes, and she smiles at me, holding my gaze with her own shining eyes.

“I love you Liam,” Harriet says, and I know how hard it is for her to say those words and that makes them mean so much more to me than I ever thought they would. I pull her against me, and we hold each other for a few more minutes, and then finally, we step apart.

“So now you’ve gone from having a forgotten wife to having a remembered one and a fiancée. Not bad going for one afternoon,” Cullen says.

I wish he hadn’t reminded me about the wife thing once more, but it’s not like I can let myself forget it now anyway. I have to find a way out of this stupid marriage so that I can marry Harriet.

I sit back down on the couch expecting Harriet to sit back down beside me, but for the moment she remains on her feet.

“Any ideas where to start with the divorce?” I ask.

“Never mind the divorce right now,” Harriet says. “Let’s get home and celebrate our engagement first.”

That’s an invitation that she doesn’t need to issue twice. I’m up and heading for the door almost before she’s finished her sentence, getting a laugh from both Max and Cullen.

“I’m sorry about all of this,” Harriet says to Max who shakes her head.

“No need to apologize,” she says. “I’m just glad it all got worked out. Oh, and congratulations by the way. We’ll have to go for drinks this weekend, the four of us, and celebrate properly.”

“It’s a date,” Harriet says. “Call me tomorrow and we’ll work out the details.”

“About the other thing Liam,” Cullen says. “Start by talking to your lawyer. He should be able to point you in the right direction. And congratulations from me too. Oh, Aunt Dorothy is going to absolutely shit with excitement.”

“And on that note, goodbye,” I say laughing.

We step out of the apartment, and I pull the door closed behind me. The second it’s closed Harriet and I fall into each other’s arms, and we kiss like we are hungry, and the other person is food. I kiss her like I have never kissed anyone before. I kiss her in a way that I hope tells her that she’s mine now and I will never let her go again, not for even a second.

My cock is hardening, our tongues collide and wrap around each other, as she presses her body against mine. I push her back until she’s resting on the wall, and I run my hands down her sides. After a second of this, she pulls her mouth from mine.

“Stop,” she says, panting for breath around the word.

I step back and release her.

“Did I hurt you?” I ask in concern.

“Of course not,” she says, shaking her head. “But if you keep kissing me like that, I’m going to throw you on the ground and ride you right here and I’m worried there are security cameras.”

I swallow as my cock sends a shiver of pleasure through my body at Harriet’s words.

“Well then we had best get you home,” I say.